Film noir. A very moody and interesting genre on many different levels. One of my favorite movie genres of all time. And then comes the film that created it back in the 1940s.
“Maltese Falcon” was the directing debut of John Huston, who wrote 3 scripts before. His good friend Howard Hawks recommended him for the job. What he did was basically ordering his secretary to just take the Dashiell Hammett and write it down in a film script format and… that was it. Jack Warner saw it and the movie got made. This is a classic noir story. A woman (the femme fatale) tells a down-trodden, hardboiled detective to help her follow somebody and that ends up into something way more. The detective also gets in conflict with the police and prosecutor.
Made in 1941, “Maltese Falcon” most definitely stood the test of time. Humphrey Bogart’s Sam Spade is already a classic and a seminal performance of the kind of cynical detective that is so typical for film noir. Mary Astor’s Brigid O’Shaughnessy is the femme fatale. A lot of her theatrical behavior refers to the character, who tries to be a damsel in distress but has her own deep secrets. These two character – Brigid and Sam – are the staples of what would become stereotypical male and female characters for the genre. An interesting performance has been delivered by Peter Lorre, who is playing Joel Cairo. The way he is acted implies that the character is at least feminine in nature if not just gay. The producers and Huston had to cut all the direct homosexual references (though a line referring to Wilmer, the villain Gutman’s, bodyguard as gunsel – which is both Yiddish for a homosexual and a jocularly derogatory twist on “damsel in distress” is intact), due to the infamous Production Code. If the movie didn’t go according to the Code (no direct sexual scenes, even showing the inner part of a female leg, no profanity, a kiss shouldn’t been longer than…), it would be banned from release. English Sydney Greenstreet has his screen debut as Gutman and is also very good, even if he was so scared about his performance that he asked Mary Astor for reassurance. A thing that has to be said about Humphrey Bogart’s performance is that for the age when the film was created, his acting is very natural even if some gestures are definitely straight from theatre.
John Huston’s directing and writing are very spot-on. Not much can be said about the script which with minor changes is basically a direct adaptation of the novel (Huston asked his secretary to simply take Hammett’s novel and put it in a script form and after reading that, the studio owner – Jack L. Warner – simply put the script into production). Still some of the dialogue is wonderful on screen with some classy one-liners to it. It was extensively rehearsed for a few days and Huston storyboarded every single shot in it, though he was very receptive. In the end 3/4 of the movie was filmed as storyboarded and the rest took into account the cast’s ideas. The process was very effective, only longer shot and scenes were rehearsed for a longer time (a 7-minute shot, something very innovative for its era, and the final meeting between all the major characters). Huston’s role as a director was a major factor in Humphrey Bogart’s decision to play Sam Spade in his friend’s directorial debut. Before that, he tended to refuse all detective characters he was offered.
Arthur Edeson’s cinematography is brilliant, even by today’s standards. Quite kinetic for its time, the camera work features a lot of low angles, hinting at the morally ambiguous characters and their actions and also adding to the tension. Also of note is a brilliant use of shadows. Much has been said about the fact that Brigid O’Shaughnessy’s part features a lot of visual references to prison (including the use of Venetian blinds and an elevator cage), but the way the shadows are used (from Venetian blinds to Spade’s office logo reflected on walls and floor) is simply beautiful. That demanded a lot of careful preparations. Still the process was so efficient that the script was made as it was written with no line changed.
Adolph Deutsch’s (that name in 1941… it still sounds funny. I know, I’m evil) music is very much of its time. In 1940s film music was always fully orchestral and referred to composers like Gustav Mahler or Pyotr Tchaikovsky. This idiom is very much in use here, with the a leitmotif for the Falcon itself being maybe not a staple, but something that definitely helps define the movie. That said, the music is very effective, though on a listening and even in film level, I think I prefer the jazzy twist on the noir sound that is so popular today, with Jerry Goldsmith and Mark Isham being the masters.
The Maltese Falcon is a brilliant movie, hands down. Great filmmaking that stood the test of time. The cinematography, the directing, the writing, all could be learnt from even today. John Huston became a prolific and a very succesful writer and director and his debut ranks among the very best. A fascinating journey would be the watching of Clint Eastwood’s “White Hunter Black Heart”, where he plays a characer seemingly inspired by John Huston on the set of “The African Queen”, even if Katherine Hepburn said it was inaccurate (the Eastwood movie is something I’ve seen, but don’t remember). A masterpiece that can’t get a different rating than the highest one.
*****
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